All my life I’ve wanted to experience a total eclipse black-out…a serious Bing Crosby in AConnecticut YankeeinKingArthur’sCourt moment..,and if I want it badly enough I can have this tomorrow afternoon.
But I’ll have to drive hundreds of miles for hours and hours plus pay for several tanks of gas and at least one motel sleep-over to get to the sweet spot.
Why couldn’t the eclipse show a little more taste in deciding which areas of the country to temporarily darken? Austin and maybe one or two other towns aside, the eclipse will mostly affect nothingtowns and bucolic, bumblefuckbackwaters, regions that nobody ever seems to visit or even think about, and that’s really a shame. I’m serious.
Imagine if it hit Boston or the Berkshires or NYC…magnificent.
Last night I watched episodes #6 and #7 of Steven Zallian’s Ripley, and what a soothing, transporting dream trip this series is…a silky and serene monochromesoulbath…a reminder of how much better life was and still is over there in certain pockets, and (this is me talking and comparing, having visited Italy six or seven times) what an ugly and soul-less corporate shopping-mall so much of the U.S. has become this century…the contrasts are devastating.
Ripley is an eight-episode reminder that there really is (or was during the mid-20th Century) a satorikindoflife to be found in parts of Italy and Sicily, better by way of simplicity and contemplation and quiet street cafes, better via centuries of tradition, pastoral beauty and sublime Italian architecture…grand romantic capturings of Napoli, Atrani (the same historic Amalfi Coast city where significant portions of Antoine Fuqua’s TheEqualizer3 were shot), Palermo, Venezia and Roma.
Life doesn’t have to be dreary and banal and soul-stifling, Zallian is telling us in part…you can find happiness standing downstream, as thegreat Jimi Hendrix once wrote, especially if you’re an elusive sociopath living on a dead guy’s trust-fund income and therefore not obliged to toil away at some sweaty, shitty-ass job to survive.
There’s definitely something different about the highly observant, suffer-no-fools Freddy character in Steven Zallian’s Ripley (Netflix, now streaming).
Played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Anthony Minghella’s quarter-century-old The Talented Mr. Ripley, Freddy is now a gender-fluid fellow played by musician Eliot Sumner, born a bio–female (the parents are Sting and TrudyStyler) and now a non-binary “they.”
The Cate Blanchett-resembling Sumner has everyone’s attention now with a Ripley supporting role as the blunt-spoken Freddy, thesuspicious-minded writer friend of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning)…a sharp-witted fellow who’s an arch-antagonist of Andrew Scott’s Ripley.
There were, of course, no uncertain perceptions about Philly’s gender or sexuality in Minghella’s film but there certainly are with Eliot.
Right away you’re thinking there’s something clearly womanish about Freddy…obviously…his voice is thin and reedy and tartlyfeminine is a Blanchett-sounding way, and his mid ‘60s Beatle-ish hair style is too long for a dude in a JFK-era realm. (The film announces itself as occurring in 1961.) Freddy has in effect been transformed into an exceptional X-factor dyke.
On one hand it’s fascinating that Freddy is portrayed not as a regular brainy dude but as a brainy lesbian strolling around in men’s clothing and wearing 1965 hair that’s half Blanchett-Dylan in I’m Not There and half Paul McCartney.
On the other hand Sumner’s casting violates our basic sense of what constitutes mid 20th Century guy vibes, traits and mannerisms. It therefore throws a monkey wrench into the Ripley engine, and our belief in Zallian’s carefully constructed reality, our faith in this elegant Italian milieu of 60-plus years ago that seems so right in so many hundreds of ways…our trust is slightly shaken.
The Sumner casting is therefore, I feel, intriguing but unfortunate at the same instant. The perversity of what has to be called an act of stunt casting is oddly interesting (jaded Europeans being ahead of the cultural curve), but it’s also anobviousnod and a capitulationtocurrentwokeattitudes and sensibilities in the area of gender and sexuality and whatnot.
Sumner’s Freddy absolutely doesn’t fit into 1961 Rome — that’s for sure.
Last Tuesday (4.2) HE shrugged at the notion of the forthcoming interracial London stage production of RomeoandJuliet…Tom Holland and FrancesAmewudah–Rivers…another “woke casting stunt”, “wealthy London liberals will eat this shit up,” etc.
I happened to agree with a reader comment that a Zendaya-like actress would have been a better fit match-wise or looks-wise (i.e., Amewudah-Rivers isn’t quite on Holland’s level). Otherwise any blatantlyracistcriticisms (I haven’t read any but I’ll take the Jamie Lloyd Company’s wordforit) are deeply unfortunate and probably best ignored.
Due respect for the 151signatories of today’s “we agree with Jonathan Glazer’s anti-Zionist-overkill Oscar speech” letter, but may I ask what took them so long? The over-one-thousand-signatures letter that sharply disagreed with Glazer’scompassion–for–Gaza–victimsspeech…that timely letter was posted nearlythree weeks ago (3.18). Life is a moving train. Hubba-hubba.
An actual earthquake just happened in Wilton, Connecticut, and apparently all over the tristate area. Not a major shaker but it lasted a good eight to ten seconds. Felt like 5.5 or thereabouts. Reports are callingit a 4.8. Centered in Lebanon, New Jersey.
Out of the blue I sat through a pair of wowser thrillers last night, both mature and well-measured and absolutely not aimed at the popcorn hooligans, and one of them, surprisingly, was a formula-adhering Liam Neeson film.
There’s nothing like the pot high of suddenly seeing a good movie or two on an unexpected (or not necessarily anticipated) basis, and just feeling more and more ripped as they proceed. And you know that most of the low-lifes out there will ignore these films or give them short effing shrift.
These are just iPhone jottings…I’ll expand in a few hours.
Steven Zallian’s Ripley (Netflix, 4.4) is a stunning work of visual art — one of most beautiful monochrome films I’ve seen this century or ever. All hail dp Robert Elswit! I watched episode #1 last night. (Eight episodes in all.) Haunting, quietly eerie and creepy and deliciously atmospheric. A knockout performance by Andrew Scott, and fascinating cameo performance by Kenneth Lonergan. It’s a completely gourmet–levelserving, and I loved the careful attention to period detail. (It’s set around the time of Rene Clement’s Purple Noon, which opened in France in March 1960.)
Set during “the troubles” (‘74 or thereabouts), InTheLand of SaintsandSinners (which isn’t an especially good title) is a way-above-average Liam Neesonfilm. Restrained and solemn and well-plotted, and it gets better and better as it moves along. Directed by longtime Clint Eastwood producer Robert Lorenz, it follows the basic Neeson-flick formula but the writing and particularly the character-sculpting are of a very high calibre, and the magnificent Kerry Condon delivers one of the greatest female villain characters ever — a feisty, take-no-shit-from-anyone IRA firebrand. What an actress!
Two months ago (2.5) I postedafewwords about Barbara Rush, whom I had just seen for the first time in ItCameFromOuterSpace (‘53) and then re-watched in WhenWorldsCollide (‘51). And now, as it must, death has placed a gentlehand upon her shoulder. She was 97. A rich, full life — and every time a movie fan watches Warren Beatty’s George Roundy try to get a bank loan in Shampoo, Rush will be re-remembered.
But I own a streaming 4K UHD Chinatown on Vudu and it looks quite beautiful. That’s right — because I don’t seem to know the difference between 4K streaming and a 4K disc, I am a total effing peon.
Despite the fact that Rod Lurie and Kyra Davis are first-rate people (seriously), they seem oblivious to the fact that frolicking in Las Vegas is tantamount to injecting poison into your soul.
HE would’ve loved to have partied in the Las Vegas of 65 years ago…Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin-Sammy Davis Jr. rat pack craps slots chickie baby booze broads bubbly “hold the Clyde” yong yong ring-a-ding-ding, etc. That’s all gone now.
Forget anyone seeing Jerry Lewis‘s The Day The Clown Cried (’72) later this year, which some seem to believe is in the cards. Just forget it.
On 1.13.24 or two and a half months ago, the belief that The Day The Clown Cried would be screened in June 2024 at the Library of Congress archive in Culpeper, Virginia (or at least sometime this year) was seemingly put to bed by Indiewire‘s Christian Zilko.
Zilko (rhymes with Sgt. Bilko) reported that an LoC representative had “confirmed to IndieWire that no public screenings are planned, as the archive does not possess a complete cut of the film.”
Oh, yeah? Then why did L.A. Times reporter Noah Bierman, after visiting the Culpeper campus nine years ago, quote the LoC’s head archivist Rob Stone saying “the library [has] agreed to not show the film for at least 10 years”? If the full version can’t be shown for lack of material why talk about screening it at all?
Two months later I inquired about also visiting the Library of Congress campus, and particularly about the possibility of viewing the metal cans containing The Day The Clown Cried.
On 10.14.15 I received an emailed reply from Mike Mashon, head of the LoC’s Moving Image section.
He said that the LoC’s agreement with Jerry Lewis places an embargo on The Day The Clown Cried “for ten years, including screenings and making any element associated with it to the public and researchers.” In other words, no can photos until 2025, and perhaps not even then.
Again: If a screening of the completed film is out of the question due to insufficient material, why mention showing it in 2025?
Even if only sections of the film are shown someday, it seems clear that the embargo will be in place until 2025 and not 2024, as some are assuming.
Yes, I’m guilty of having previously posted about a presumed June 2024 unveiling date, but I was lazy or distracted or had bees in my head.
Just to be extra double sure, early this morning I asked Mashon to confirm the embargo date. He’s no longer on the job — retired. Let’s just presume that Clown Revelation Day, if it happens at all, won’t be until the summer of ’25.
Although the LoC apparently intends to eventually screen some kind of celluloid representation of The Day The Clown Cried at its Audio Visual Conservation campus in Culpeper, Virginia, curator Rob Stone has stated the LoC does not have a complete print of the film.
This morning a friend passed along a 31-minute Vimeo file (posted two months ago but yanked on Thursday morning…sorry) that provides the first real taste of Clown, or at least the first I’ve ever sat through.
